Cosmic Shambles with Josie Long

Making its way from the UK to WA, the Cosmic Shambles tour brings a clever variety show never seen before. We caught up with well-known British comedian, Josie Long to get the inside scoop on the tour.

Making its way from the UK to WA, the Cosmic Shambles tour brings a clever variety show never seen before. The live shows will deliver world leading scientists, comedians and performers to Australia and New Zealand over March and April this year. Host, Robin Ince, will be joined by a cast of world leading scientists, comedians and performers including Josie Long, Dr Helen Czerski, Matt Parker and Professor Lucie Green. We caught up with well-known British comedian, Josie Long to get the inside scoop on the tour.

Josie Long is a British comedian from Orpington, Kent. She first started stand-up at the age of fourteen and won the BBC New Comedy Awards at just seventeen. Since then she has studied English at Oxford University and grown to be one of the UK’s most popular comedians. She also wrote for the teen comedy-drama series, Skins and appeared in the show as a careers' advisor.

Josie has been great friends with Robin Ince for years and together they hosted popular podcast, Book Shambles, which is the root of the Cosmic Shambles tour. Josie is also a regular contributor to online source, The Incomplete Map of the Cosmic Genome, alongside comedians and scientists Stephen Fry, Brian Cox and Ross Noble.

At 14-years-old, when Josie was in high-school, she chose subjects more aligned with literature than science. A quick decision at a young age set her on a particular path in life and, at that moment, science wasn’t on her agenda. It was only around her mid-twenties that her interest in science was piqued and, since then, she has found it increasingly fascinating.

“I find it so fascinating that we live in a world and are learning new things about it every day” she said.

Josie is super excited to be heading back down under, this being her 9thvisit to Australia. Her last visit to WA was for the Perth International Comedy Festival in 2013. The busy tour schedule doesn’t allow much leisure time for the crew, however, she said despite being hard at work, spending time with brilliant people makes the tour feel like a holiday.

“Being around such enthusiastic people - full of knowledge and passion for music - the whole road trip is going to be great.”

Josie said the shows are going to be mind-boggling and unpredictable with tonnes of local acts and scientists to make it all the more exciting.

Without giving away much, Josie told us she will be performing a ghost experiment, essentially trying to prove their existence at each destination of the tour. With these types of experiments she said you can never predict how it will pan out with every show being unique. Being a comedian, rather than a scientist like her colleagues, Josie predicts there will be a lot of improvising, laughs and plenty of fun with the other cast members who are, she says, amazing speakers and entertainers that engage people of all groups and ages.

“It’s crazy, these people have done like 20 years of research and study and I just get up on stage and get to be silly.”

“These people have so much knowledge and so much to talk about. When you’re so passionate about something and you love what you do, it really shows through.”

“The show will be full of optimism, enthusiasm and excitement and be really, really nerdy!”

Cosmic Shambles hits Perth for one show - April 13 at the Octagon Theatre

Check out more information http://www.scoop.com.au/Region/Nedlands/Events/Cosmic-Shambles-Live?ShowPreview=1